ATHENS, Ga. – An FBI special agent testified Monday that electronic location data seems to place Georgia nursing student Laken Riley and the man accused of killing her in the same wooded area at the time of her death.
Jose Ibarra, 26, is charged with murder and other crimes in Riley’s death in February. He waived his right to a jury trial, meaning Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard is hearing the case and will alone decide on Ibarra's guilt or innocence.
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The killing of the 22-year-old woman added fuel to the national debate over immigration during this year's presidential campaign when federal authorities said Ibarra illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 and was allowed to stay in the country while he pursued his immigration case.
FBI Special Agent James Burnie told the court Monday that he reviewed location data from Ibarra's cellphone and Riley's cellphone and smart watch. GPS data from Riley's watch very precisely puts her inside the wooded area with running trails where her body was found on Feb. 22. Pings between Ibarra's phone and cell towers and the fact his phone wasn't making any Wi-Fi connections at the time indicate he was also likely in the woods, Burnie said.
Prosecutors also played a recording of a jail phone call from May between Ibarra and his wife, Layling Franco. FBI specialist Abeisis Ramirez, who translated the call from Spanish, testified that Ibarra told Franco that he had been at the University of Georgia looking for work, and that his wife repeatedly said she was fed up and that she wanted him to tell the truth.
Franco "continues to ask, ‘What happened with the girl?’" and said Ibarra “must know something,” Ramirez said. He responds: “Layling, enough." Ramirez said Franco told Ibarra that it's crazy that police only found his DNA.
Ibarra is charged with one count of malice murder, three counts of felony murder and one count each of kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, hindering an emergency telephone call, tampering with evidence and being a peeping Tom.
Ibarra took selfies of himself early on the day Riley was killed, according to testimony from an FBI agent who analyzed data from cellphones seized from the apartment where Ibarra lived with his two brothers and two other people. In the photos, Ibarra is wearing a black Adidas baseball cap and a dark hooded jacket.
A few hours before Riley was killed, a man in a black Adidas baseball cap was captured on surveillance video at the door of a first-floor apartment in a University of Georgia housing complex. A female graduate student who lived there testified Monday that she heard someone trying to get inside her apartment when she was in the shower. As she looked through the peephole, the person ducked and walked away, but then she saw the same person peering into her window, she said.
Police officers using a grainy screen shot from the surveillance video approached a man wearing a black Adidas cap the day after the killing. That turned out to be Diego Ibarra, one of Jose Ibarra's brothers.
University of Georgia police Sgt. Joshua Epps testified that he was called to question Diego Ibarra outside the apartment where the Ibarras lived. Epps testified that the brother had no obvious recent injuries.
Outside the apartment, police also questioned Argenis Ibarra, Jose Ibarra and Rosbeli Elisbar Flores Bello. Epps and Corporal Rafael Sayan, who speaks Spanish and helped with the questioning, testified that they noticed scratches on Jose Ibarra.
When asked why his knuckles were red, Jose Ibarra told them it was because of the cold but didn't really explain several scratches on his arms, Sayan said.
Security video from the apartment complex showed a man wearing a shirt with a distinctive pattern throwing something into a trash bin. A crime scene specialist from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation testified there was a lot of clothing in the one-room apartment but that she didn't find that shirt in the apartment and didn't find any bloody clothing.
A police officer testified Friday that he found a dark hooded jacket in the trash bin seen in the video and that testing revealed Riley's blood on the hoodie.
Flores Bello identified the man in the video as Jose Ibarra and confirmed that identification on the witness stand Monday. She said she had previously seen him wearing the dark hooded jacket and thought it was strange that he threw it away.
Testifying through of an interpreter, Bello said she met Ibarra in Queens, New York. Ibarra's brother, Diego, lived in Athens and had been urging Ibarra to move there, saying they would find work. She traveled with Ibarra to join his brother in Georgia. She said they went to the Roosevelt Hotel, which served as an intake center for migrants, to ask for a “humanitarian flight” to Georgia in September 2023. When they arrived in Atlanta, a friend of Diego Ibarra picked them up and drove them to Athens.
Riley was a student at Augusta University College of Nursing, which also has a campus in Athens, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) east of Atlanta.